Platform: iOS, Android

Heroism is nice, but you know what's even better? A tidy profit! In Kairosoft's latest simulation for mobile devices, Dungeon Village, you find yourself the mayor of a struggling little fantasy village that hasn't seen much business in years. With monsters roaming the countrysides and nearby dungeons simmering with danger, how can you possibly hope to get a coveted five star rating? Why, by enticing in adventurers to do the dirty work for you, of course! Design and build your town to lure in adventurers of all kinds, who will not only keep your coffers full to bursting as they frequent your shops, but also set about ridding the surrounding lands of monster menaces. As they get stronger, so will you, and with their help your town will grow into a bustling medieval metropolis in no time... provided you don't find yourself rampaged into the ground by an angry dragon family, of course.

While not technically part of the "Story" series of games, Dungeon Village shares most of the same gameplay. You're given an assistant who walks you through the basics of running your fledgling adventurer/tourist trap, and as you progress and improve more options are unlocked. In addition to the almighty dollar, which is important for building structures and paying expenses, you'll also earn points you can spend on events to increase the town's popularity or otherwise strengthen its inhabitants, or on new facilities to build. Of course, don't spend too long arranging your daffodils and boosting your bakery's appeal... that's not where your bread is buttered.

Instead, most of the game relies on managing the adventurers you manage to entice into your town as your facilities and ratings improve. You want to keep them satisfied with shops and events so they eventually may decide to move in and spend even more money, but you also want their work ethic high so they're more likely to respond to the various quests that pop up when you decide to hire someone. Quests can be anything from dealing with roving bands of monsters outside the town to exploring dungeons filled with enemies and treasures. You don't actually get to do any of this yourself, unfortunately, but as more and more monsters move in and dungeons appear, you'll have your hands full managing everything. If your adventurers seem to be getting trounced too often, or just aren't showing up to quests enough for your liking, you can spend a little cash and give them presents of equipment to make them happy and boost their stats.

Despite the adventurer mechanics, Dungeon Village feels very similar to Kairosoft's other titles, which is hardly a bad thing since their addictive, colourful and easy to grasp gameplay is what makes them such excellent time wasters to begin with. It's a little like watching a tiny MMORPG, with people trundling around and engaging in battles for loot, and you'll definitely get a few giggles out of the goofy puns and riffs the adventurer names take on classic characters when you recognise them. It would have been nice if the fantasy theming was better carried through some of the shops, and if you prefer a more hands-on approach to your adventuring you're out of luck. But Dungeon Village is still an exceptionally vibrant, cute, and surprisingly engrossing little game that you'll find yourself reaching for whenever you have some time to kill... and maybe even when you should be doing other things as well.

And this is why I hate Mondays on this site. Some of the greatest looking games are for apps only. I remember when people used to search for flash games when they were too poor/cheap to buy a real game. With Facebook and apps you starting to see games always searching for a way to take that dollar out of your pocket...[/old man rant]

This look fun and worth it but sadly I told myself I not going to pay for anything when I am searching for free stuff. If it had a demo then that a different story but I not going to pick up a game just because of a review. Sorry no offense but most of these reviews always make the game sound better then what they really are which I guess is part of your job.

Sorry but using Doodle God as an example, some games simply want money and willing to make a game with no game play to get it. How can I be sure this isn't a pretty idle game? The only thing you really told was that this game have quests. Well last time I check Progress Quest had quests too.

Actually, ICXCIX, I said you built a town and managed building expenses by hiring adventurers to go out on quests for you. :) That's a bit more direct. Further, as Jay points out, the only thing that's our job to do is to review games we genuinely consider to be the best, which is why we're so positive about them in addition to being honestly critical about the areas they lack in. While obviously you can't please all of the people all of the time, I can promise you that every bit of praise I have given to a game is because I feel it deserves it, not to make it "sound good".

While it would be nice if all games were free, obviously that isn't the case, and I think rather than ignore those games that are for pay and ARE worth talking about, it's better to simply release those reviews on specific days so you, the reader, knows what to expect.

I'm glad you guys reviewed this game! I got hooked on Kairosoft after I bought their soccer management game, Pocket League, for 50 cents as part of the Google Play promotion going on right now. It's one of the best games I've ever played, IMHO (in terms of tastes, my favorite game is "Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup", a roguelike).

The game plays a lot like Starcraft

(1) It starts off slow but you quickly get overwhelmed. Just like in Starcraft, you don't lose because you lose the game (it's straight out impossible to lose the game, since you can only get stronger) but when you can't keep up with your resource input (eg, you have $200,000 sitting in the bank).

(2) There is macro and micromanagement -- the management of the town and of the individual battles. Well, there is a lot of management besides that, of course.

(3) The accomplishments are "implicit", not the achievement of in-game goals but the thinking up of builds.

(4) You'll look up 12 hours later and realized the game has had you mesmerized clicking on about a dozen different options as fast as you can.

There are some other really cool things about this game as well

(5) Think SimCity with a more visible model. One of the shortcomings of SimCity is that the economic model is often not represented explicitly, for the most part. You can put a ballpark downtown and that will increase congestion on certain roads, but you can't see the actual cars. In this game, which unfortunately has no traffic model (and whose economic model is not nearly as complex) you can see exactly what each citizen is doing at all times.
... Incidentally, I believe SimCity to be a "liberal" game because of it's encouragement of abstract models, while this to be a "conservative" game because of its emphasis on individual actions.

(6) Thus, one part of the game is figuring out the rules via observation. You can follow a character around and see where he tends to stop. This is not a simulation game, so the rules, for the most part, are planted there by the developers -- but that doesn't make it any less entertaining to discover.

(7) This is probably a critique of a lot of Japanese games, but, oftentimes, getting better consists of discovering "insights" built into the game by the developers. It is, in short, "finding secrets" rather than "feeling like a hacker" -- you are getting better because you are progressing along a predetermined path, not because of the illusion of personal innovation. But this sort of philosophy has it's own appeal as well.

(8) The fun of the game IS it's replay value. This is true of all strategy games. The point of chess is not to reach the end, obviously! However, I think Kairosoft did it's best to ruin the replay, by making replays artificially easy. In Pocket League, they insist on letting you carry over the unlocks. I haven't reached the end of this game yet, but I'm guessing they do the same thing. It would be far better to simply "leave the replay alone" and simply have a high-score table or even a set of time-based challenges. I want my replays HARDER, not easier!

(9) The nod to the original Final Fantasy Tactics (and probably tons of other games) gets brownie points. One of your starting guys, eg, is "Clown Stripe" (a pun on Cloud Strife).

ICXCIX: I agree with your lament for free games, but we haven't stopped reporting on them by any means. As the industry has grown, so, too, have avenues for monetizing games. When given the choice, most people will choose doing something and getting paid for it as opposed to doing something for nothing, which is why so many game creators go that route. I don't mind parting with a bit of cash for a good game, and the quality of games being released now (both free and not so free) is much higher than before. No need to be sad. :-)

mine suddenly hangs up when the 'talked-about store' news pops out. i kept pressing the blinking arrow and the screen but it never goes out.. :(
i tried removing it on my ipod then downloading it again several times, but still i encounter the same problem over again.
what should i do??? can't go further on the game because of that 'news'... :((((

This game is okay, not really worth the money but I guess considering the free games are so annoying- you're basically just paying for no ads. My advice: don't bother, do something better with your time.

K most of my adverturers are stuck and saying "I can't go home
none of the monsters will attack and kill them. Also, for people that cant move there sure seem to be able to mass join all my quests, making them annoying as 1 out of 9 goes into the dungeon. anyone else having issues or has solved this problem?

To those the game got stuck with the "talked-about store" message. i closed the app, and then restarted it again. loaded the auto save, and immidiatly launched the game menu. went to the settings and changed the quality to performance, unchecked the lock auto rotate (i had the game horizontal). exited the menu, rotated the game to vertical, and got the controls up (it's the little green triangle at the bottom. once it was up, when the message poped - just press the middle circle to confirm the message :)

also on Jayisgames

>
chrpa—
The new game from Bart Bonte is sharp yellow and black. The first-signal system activates! Wasps! Hornets! Caution Bio-Hazard! Caution Wet Floor! Slow Down! The last one is correct, no need to hurry anywhere, we've got awesome relaxing game with...
...

>
chrpa—
Huzzah! Tesshi-e is back with another excellent game! First, don't panic after you notice the intro screen you've seen before. Yes, it's from The Escape Hotel 3: Remake released last summer. Tesshi-e just revisited his favourite hotel, lost his way...
...

>
chrpa—
Hi! The new Weekday Escape is here bringing three fantastic games! Lutaru gives us a box for playing, with a small button here and a tiny hole there and waits until we figure out what to do with it. After...
...

>
chrpa—
Maybe you are on holiday, maybe you are planning it and maybe you don't have any. Anyway, Weekday Escape is here as a short break for everybody! Well, not so short, in fact. The first game is from Detarame Factory...
...

JayIsGames offers a free online experience with the best free online games. You can read our daily honest reviews and walkthroughs, play games, discuss about them. JayIsGames.com is a leading Flash and Online game review site. Since 2003, we review every day only the best, including casual games, flash games, arcade games, indie games, download games, shooting games, escape games, RPG games, puzzle games, mobile games and much more.
Submit a Game: Don't just read reviews or play games on JayIsGames.com, submit them! Submit your game now and we might release it in homepage. Use our game submission form.
Check us back often! We add new games every day and only the best games!